


Framing Fearful Symmetry

by FinnMcSin



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Angst, Bestiality, Character Death, Elements of Rape/Non-Con, F/M, depictions of blood, depictions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 10:41:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13165221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FinnMcSin/pseuds/FinnMcSin
Summary: Alex Reagan hasn't been sleeping well. The nightmares that plague her, however, are not always about demonic entities lurking in the corners of her room. Enjoy five nightmares straight from the mind of a podcasting professional.





	Framing Fearful Symmetry

**Author's Note:**

> Be warned: some of the content below is extremely explicit. If you have a weak stomach, I'd skip this one.

**I. First**

"Doctor Strand!"

The hallway she strides down after him is long and stark white, with terrible fluorescents blazing down from the ceiling. It feels like she's in an operating theater, the subject of some perverse medical procedure, and no matter how quickly she walks, Strand is always at least ten steps ahead of her. 

"Doctor Strand, wait!"

When he turns to face her, azure gemstones blazing with cold fire, Alex staggers back a full step. She had nearly run into him, and his abrupt stop is enough of a shock that she sputters, forgets what she had been about to say. Doctor Strand never forgets what he wants to say though, and the words that spew from him are laced with an awful venom that seeps through skin and muscle, setting her joints to aching and her bones to burning.

"How can I help you, Miss Reagan?" The way he spits her last name like some foul curse has Alex stumbling another step back, eyes wide in shocked hurt. Apparently her scolded puppy stare has no effect upon the wrath of one Richard Strand, who takes an additional step to follow her. 

"Are you here to ask for more information about my private life? To dig up skeletons you have no right to exhume? To force me, naked and sans dignity, screaming into the light for the entertainment of your viewers?" Another backward step, and he follows her again. Alex should be dead, she thinks. Her heart stopped somewhere in the middle of his third question, and not even that electrifying cerulean glower can jolt it back to life.

"How many times have you lied to me? How often have you destroyed the growing trust between us? How many times are you going to fuck up, Miss Reagan?" This isn't Doctor Strand. He never curses, an oddity Alex has grown rather fond of over time. Her reply is little more than a hoarse, pained utterance that could never be described as a word. It is the vocalization of an animal wounded and confused.

When Richard whips around to continue down the endless hallway, Alex does not follow him.  
He does not want her to follow him.

The bed is soft and her comforter is warm, but Alex flails when her eyes open. She twists, grabs for her phone nearby to read their last conversation with sickness rising in her gut. Five full rereadings are required to soothe her fears.

[To: Doctor Strand - 8:19 PM] Hey, do you want to go get something for lunch together tomorrow? I know a place.  
[From: Doctor Strand - 8:24 PM] Of course. Am I picking you up or vice versa?  
[To: Doctor Strand - 8:26 PM] I'll pick you up. Hearing you complain about my death-mobile pleases me.  
[From: Doctor Strand - 8:27 PM] Of course it does. Get some sleep soon, Alex.  
[To: Doctor Strand - 8:30 PM] Goodnight, Richard.  
[From: Doctor Strand - 8:31 PM] Goodnight, Alex.

Numb fingers fly across the keypad.

[To: Doctor Strand - 2:57 AM] Are you awake?

**II. Second**

Pain blossoms from her right shoulder, spreading down her bicep like wildfire. The glinting knife, held in clever digits that have always seemed more suited to holding a book than violence, carves circular patterns into her skin. The very tip of the blade is sharp enough, thin enough, that when turned on its end, it can easily engrave the complex numbers that must accompany the circular patterns.

When she struggles, cold manacles bite deep into the delicate flesh of her wrists and a strangled, gasping sob escapes Alex. He stares down at her, calm and detached behind clear lenses, like he's watching an insect squirm beneath a cup.

"Richard, please!" Her voice breaks on his name, and she feels as if she might very well fracture into a thousand tiny fragments when the knife twists to press through flesh and muscle, into the joint at her shoulder. Its razor point sheers with horrifying ease through cartilage and Alex can only wonder why she hasn't fainted, why she can still feel the hot blood pooling beneath her.  
When she jerks back to the waking world, gasping with tears trekking down her cheeks, Alex can only tremble until she realizes that there is a wet warmth pooled beneath her. Covers thrown free reveal dark stains on her brand new sheets, deep and vibrant crimson. 

It isn't time.

She shouldn't start for another two weeks. 

On trembling and bloodstained legs, Alex moves into the bathroom to clean herself.

**III. Third**

Richard Strand should be too heavy to cradle like this, especially lying limp with all of his weight lax upon her lap and his head lolling against her shoulder.

The panic blossoming in Alex's chest reaches a fever pitch and she rocks him, whispers to him, pleads with him even as her vision blurs and hot niter spills down her cheeks. An awful sob wrenches itself free of her and Alex clings tight to the man cradled in her arms, even as his familiar heat begins to fade. A chill has begun to seep into his flesh, and Alex's palms slide across muscled forearms, failing to chase warmth back into them.

He will never hear her whispered words of sorrow and devotion, of longing and terror. He will never feel the way she curls around him, or the hot tears that trickle from her jawline to dapple his cheeks. Trembling fingers card through his hair, brushing it away from a visage growing paler with each passing moment and Alex keens her despair to the endless void.

The waking world holds no relief. Alone in her bed when she jerks back to the present, Alex searches blindly in the darkness for contact, for reassurance, for Richard. Finding none, she grabs for her cellphone like a lifeline cast to her while adrift on stormy seas. 

Richard likely will not appreciate being called at four in the morning, but Alex needs to hear his voice. When the ringing dies into a pre-recorded voicemail message, she whimpers into the darkness surrounding her bed.

**IV.Fourth**

This is far from the first time they have sought one another for sweet comfort in the night. His hands, roughened by pen callouses as they are, glide with a dulcet gentleness across her skin. The warmth of his mouth meets the warmth between her thighs and Alex sighs her relief, fingers carding through dark tresses even as she writhes beneath him, undulating up into that talented tongue. 

That pleasure rises inside her, building until she pants his name to the ceiling above his bed. Rough whiskers tickle along the inside of her thigh, up the taut expanse of her stomach until he can nuzzle against the soft swell of her breast. Alex's head has tipped back, and one hand carding through his hair slides further down to feel-...

Fur where there should be bare muscle rippling beneath her palm. Eyes snap open and she jolts upward (awake?) to find that the thing on top of her is no longer Richard. It was mere moments ago, but now the curling horns and long muzzle bear no resemblance to her colleague and sometimes-lover. 

The harsh forward thrust of its hips does not precede pleasure as Richard's might, but a stabbing pain that leaves her screaming beneath it, twisting wildly in an attempt to get away until claws are buried between her shoulder blades, forcing her flat on her stomach into the mattress with an appendage that is neither hand nor paw but something in between.

Mindless, agonizing rutting is accompanied by Richard's deep baritone in her ear, whispering cadences of sweet filth that force arousal.

When Alex wakes on her stomach in the middle of her mattress, covers thrown free and sprawled too wide, it is all she can do to curl into the tiniest ball she can manage and sob until morning. 

**V. Final**

Richard looks so happy.

The pair haven't let one another go since Coralee arrived. His wife has curled into his chest, head tucked just beneath his chin. They fit together like two pieces of the same puzzle, her brilliant blonde contrasting to Richard's dark, tousled tresses. When she looks up at him, his smile is brilliant and full of an adoration so deep it twists Alex's stomach in a sickening, gut-ripping cramp.

Rather than interrupt the pair, she climbs into her little Subaru and pulls out of the driveway. The gravel crunches under her wheels and Alex looks back, but even the sound of her departure cannot draw Richard from the joy of Coralee's return.

And it shouldn't. 

Right?

That's what Alex tells herself when she wakes to the buzzing of her alarm clock. It's what she tells herself when she braves the rain to find her car in the parking lot. It's what she tells herself when Richard's first word in their conversation that day is:

"Coralee?"

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by my roommate, Harbinger, who writes her own fanfiction for TBTP! Click [here](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Harbinger) to check her out.


End file.
